EXPLORING FEMININE SUBJECTIVITY IN CARIBBEAN HISTORY: A NEW HISTORICIST PERSPECTIVE INEDWIDGEDANTICAT’STHE FARMING OF BONES

Abstract

Set within the context of Caribbean literature, this paper deploys New Historicism to posit in its argument that history as used in EdwidgeDanticat’sThe Farming of Bones exposes the socio-political dilemma hindering the Caribbean people from realising a seamless sense of Caribbean-ness. To this end, the study unravels the various layers of Caribbean history to challenge forces that have made the Caribbean people to suffered setbacks, first, in the ways their leaders not only hijacked their nations in terms of bad leadership but by doing so, have set precedence that have continued to hinder the Caribbean people from realising the essence of selfhood. Second, the paper exposes the relational tensions that have created divisions among the Caribbean people. The essence of these is to sustain the argument that Caribbean women writers do not only use their texts as a platform for decrying gender imbalances within patriarchal setting or deploy history as a form of writing back to the dominating centre but that by engaging with history, they too write to the Caribbean nations to interrogate the state of nation-state and question the notion of selfhood in the context of the Caribbean. Thus, the paper reveals the relationship between authorial intentions and text-meaning by loosening various historical knots that provide context for interrogating the sense of nationhood in the Caribbean.